“New and Improved” sounds so exciting when you see it on a label, especially in the beauty world! It triggers in your mind that the product you’ve been using is better than before… but is it really? We’ve been talking a lot about marketing terms lately, and that’s because it’s such a huge unlearning we think is important in our industry. There are many reasons why a company may reformulate a product: consumer complaints, regulatory requirements, availability of raw ingredients, supply chain demand, stability issues, and even remarketing products to get back into the spotlight. What you may not know about products that have been reformulated is the reason behind the reformulation. 

According to the FDA, unless a company receives any complaints about a product, it’s voluntary for a company to report the complaint to the FDA or create a voluntary recall for any products that may have caused reactions with customers. Unfortunately, the FDA doesn’t have the bandwidth to check in with every single company and look into all the practices and procedures for every product and assumes a company is compliant unless complaints are filed. They don’t even need to share why a product has been reformulated to the public.

This is why it’s so important for companies to hear customer feedback. And even more important for the company to listen! 

We believe the science in skincare is a lot of noticing what’s working and what isn’t working, but most large companies aren’t so nimble on the formulating end. Botnia is different because we’re constantly looking at how we can improve our formulas through customer feedback as well as esthetician feedback. When we learn how customers use our products, we take that feedback back into our lab and solve for it directly with plants. We can make a faster turnaround and innovate more quickly than other companies that are less nimble.

Reformulating our back bar

Similarly, with our Kale Compound and Kale-Yeah Mask, we were able to be very specific about what we wanted out of them based on customer feedback and wanting to get more potency out of that plant. We did a little research and bought a freeze dryer that helps to preserve the nutritional value of the plant to make it more potent without sacrificing our values and what’s actually healthy for the skin. See our new freeze dryer in action!

Why we hand-make our skincare in small batches

We hand make all of our skincare in small batches so that it’s as fresh and potent as possible. We take notes on all of our batches and if we receive feedback for a product, we watch those batches closely. It’s so important for us to hear about the experience our customers are having with the products so we can adjust and improve them.

Our new batching system is easy to decode when your product was freshly made. Find the sticker (usually on the bottom of your product) with four to six numbers and track your batch on our website here. Six number batches are the date when your product was made. Ex: 230111, (yr/mo/day) was made on January 11, 2023. See our quick tutorial here.